


Smothered in Moonlight

by RaenUE



Category: Iconoclasts (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Royal and Mina are also there but this fic isn’t really about them, somewhat a character study on both Robin and grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-23 22:34:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21088889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaenUE/pseuds/RaenUE
Summary: She was in the only place that had air within thousands of miles, so why couldn’t she breathe?Heavy endgame spoilers.Don’t let this be your first exposure to Iconoclasts.





	Smothered in Moonlight

She couldn’t save everyone.

She and Royal, they both tried their best, they both went as far as they could to make things right, to fix everything that had happened.

They went as far as the moon, but it seemed like even that wasn’t enough.

As she watched the Starworm rear its head back to smash into the barrier between them, it felt like nothing they had done had been enough.

As she watched the glass shatter and the air spill out, it felt like something inside her broke too.

But there’d be time for that later. Robin took a deep breath, grabbed Royal, and ran. He seemed to be saying something, but she couldn’t hear him over the roar of the air rushing past them as they ran through the moon base, the doors before them opening and then closing as they passed by each authentication panel and it scanned Royal.

They’d both get out of here; they had come so far and they’d go just a bit further. Even if it was just to go home, to just be with the people they cared about, that cared about them, then it wa-

Oh.

Oh no.

No no no no no no no this wasn’t happening this couldn’t be happening she couldn’t let this happen.

The authenticator for the next door had been knocked loose by something and was waving wildy in the wind. It might be too far to read them from the door, and if that-

No, she couldn’t let that happen. There wasn’t any point in worrying about it, because she’d fix it, she’d fix it like everything else she had fixed before, she’d put Royal down, reel in the panel, reattach it to the wall, and carry him through.

The cable was caught on a pipe sticking on the wall.

She looked around frantically for something, for anything that she could use to pry it off, to free the panel and let them both escape. Her wrench wouldn’t give her enough leverage, so-

“Leave me.”

No.

“We can’t both get over the crates at the entrance.”

No!

“I deserve this. After all that I’ve done, I deserve this.”

NO!

“But you don’t.”

NO!!!

“Robin…”

She wanted to scream. She wanted to say she was sorry.

“Time’s running out. Please… Go back to your brother.”

But the words wouldn’t come out. She didn’t want to leave Royal behind, she didn’t want to be nothing more than another person who abandoned him, she didn’t want to be someone who abandoned someone who had only tried to make things better, she didn’t want to be someone who only cared about themself, she didn’t want to be someone who threw people aside once they stopped being useful…

…Before she knew it, she was in the escape pod, on the way back down to the planet below. Had some long-forgotten survival instinct kicked in and forced her to flee before she died a pointless death?

Robin had no idea.

She felt like shit.

The lump in her throat, the pressure that had been there since her dad died, was heavier than ever.

She had just left Royal to die.

He might have felt he deserved it, because he had angered Him, but …something had been wrong, from the very start. She didn’t know everything, but it felt like Royal had been kept out of the loop regarding everything happening with the One Concern. Deliberately left out, even. There was a room for him on the moon base, but from how the Agents treated him, to how Chrome treated him, to how Mother, _his_ mother had treated him…

Did they not expect him to understand?

Had they intended to leave him behind all along?

Did they want him to fail at whatever he set out to do?

Why not just leave him in the room with the sand?

But did that matter? In the end she couldn’t help him either.

Him, or Black, or anyone else on the planet that they together had now doomed.

The planet that Robin was now falling back towards.

Robin crawled out of the escape pod and tried to stand, but for the first time in a very long time, her body wouldn’t listen and her legs gave out.

The constant push to continue, to do _something_, whether it be repair houses, or escape from the One Concern, or protect Isilugar, or help rescue Samba, or seek an audience with Mother, or to go to the moon had reached its limit.

_Robin_ had reached her limit.

She wanted to cry, to weep, to wail her heart out, but her body was too tired to even do that.

All she could do was slump against the side of the escape pod as she waited for either her energy to return or for her end to come.

A door opened somewhere nearby, probably from her house as she vaguely recalled telling the escape pod to head home.

“What? Robin?”

It was Mina’s voice.

“How did you…?!”

Robin didn’t look up, but she heard Mina rush over to her and bend down.

“Are you alright, honey?”

Sensation slowly crept back into her limbs, and Robin took her time pushing herself back to her feet. Her stance was shaky, but she nonetheless remained upright as she looked up to the moon, half-registering that Mina had continued to talk.

“So, you’re back alone…”

Robin knew what Mina meant, but didn’t want to think about it.

Then again, it’s not like she could think of anything else.

“Well, we’re all about to go, right?”

Mina shrugged, then crossed her arms, looking down at the ground as her voice took a more somber tone.

“Sorry, that’s terrible.”

She was right, but she didn’t know the extent of how bad it was.

And then, just as quickly, her tone shifted back.

“You are back home, though. You’re too good. Heh!”

The laugh felt forced, the smile on her face felt forced and as she looked towards the sky, alongside Robin, even that felt forced.

“That worm creature smashed into the ground near here… What will happen now?”

Robin didn’t know.

Nobody knew.

Mina grabbed Robin’s hand and held it tightly. Mina’s hand was warm, and Robin looked down at it, it slowly registering in her brain that this was the first time she and Mina had had any particular intimate contact. She looked back up at Mina, who smiled back at her.

“Sweet, little Robin…”

Her voice was soft, almost melodic.

“Please don’t feel like you failed. It’s crazy, the amount of things you have managed to do. You just wanted to help. Despite people resisting.”

She paused for a moment, letting out a long sigh before she continued.

“That makes you cool, okay?”

Mina looked back towards the moon, still holding onto Robin’s hand.

“You make me realize how much of a jerk I can sound like. Also, that I am pretty selfish.”

Mina wasn’t wrong, but was that _wrong_? She cared about the people that she cared about, she couldn’t help that, and could Robin hold that against her? No, not at all.

“Some decisions aren’t meant to just be for yourself, they are for everybody else.”

Robin’s breath caught in her throat for another moment as Mina looked back at her.

Royal had said nearly the exact same thing to her on the ride to the moon.

“But it doesn’t stop me worrying I’ve ruined everything I had with Samba and my mother. Those emotions are okay, but sometimes there is a greater purpose, right?”

She glanced away from Robin.

“Hah, I kinda feel like I am rambling a bunch of quotes from a poster. But I think I’m making a point. Then again, maybe it’s just more excuses for myself. I am good at those.”

Mina let out a bitter laugh, then looked back at the moon.

“Your brother is in your house. Some other people who helped out along the way, too.”

There was a long, drawn out silence before she turned back to Robin.

“You should go now.”

Mina’s eyes darted all over Robin’s face. It was clear that she was in distress, but who wouldn’t be in this situation? Robin had just… accepted everything that had come at her, but wasn’t what Mina was going through what it was supposed to be?

Mina grabbed Robin’s body and pulled her close, tightly hugging her, letting Robin’s body go limp.

It was easier to just accept that this was how things were than it was to keep fighting it, wasn’t it?

“Robin, I’m so sorry for anything stupid I said or did.”

Mina’s voice was trembling, more than it ever had.

More than when Black held Samba before her, taunting her with the life of the one she cared about the most.

“Everybody loves you, okay? Don’t forget that!”

She backed away slightly, choking back tears as she looked into Robin’s eyes, another forced smile on her face.

“You’re bigger than all of us! I wish the world could’ve know that.”

Mina continued to hold Robin up, struggling more with trying to make it appear like she had everything together than with lifting an entire person.

“I… I think I need to go home now. I don’t know how many days or hours or minutes we have left. These two conflicting sides of my stupid life… I’m afraid that everybody hates me.”

Mina leaned forward and gave Robin a quick kiss on the cheek before letting go of her shoulders, the full weight of Robin’s body once again weighing heavy on her legs,

“Farewell, little Robin.”

She didn’t hesitate to run off, but she stopped after a few paces and turns back to strike a cheesy pose, her arm stretched out towards the sky.

“I’ll see you in a different world!” She cried out, before turning once again.

As she watched Mina retreat towards her home, Robin’s mind remained fixated on something she said.

‘It crashed nearby.’

And…

She had only caught a glimpse of the Starworm after Royal attacked him, but there was a splash of blue on his skin that hadn’t been there before.

Maybe those things meant something important. Maybe there was still something left to do, but she needed to take those few extra steps that would bring her home too.

She was tired, so, so tired, and she’d finally allow herself to rest once she got home.

**Author's Note:**

> Iconoclasts is… it’s a game that has a lot of strong, emotional moments, but the one that always stood out to me was right when you return from the moon. Robin’s spent the whole game running around, trying her best to make the best of her current situation, and she seemed relatively… alright. It wasn’t as if she wasn’t emotive because she did show visible surprise and happiness, but we never really see her sad up until that point. We know from one of the very first dialogue boxes in the game that her father had just died, and that she’s still relatively young, and at first glance it may seem like it was just practical limitation that she never seemed particularly upset, where it was just a set of sprites Konjak never got around to making because he made the entire game on his own and Iconoclasts was already a monumental undertaking. The ‘look away from the screen and hold her body’ sprite appears in a couple places (after Mina gets attacked by the Spine Controller, for example), but that’s really the entire extent of it.  
And then, once she crawls out of the escape pod, everything just breaks, and we see her, for the first time in the game, grieve. We see the mask that she put up, that we now know with certainty that she had put up, the struggle to keep going at any cost in the face of the death of father, sister-in-law, and niece (and her brother’s apparent death) simply come to a crashing halt and she breaks down.  
And that stuck with me.
> 
> I used Mina’s lines verbatim because it’s some of the best dialogue I’ve ever read, and I don’t feel like there’s much that I could ever do to improve it. I think I might come back and revisit this idea, but for now I suppose I can be satisfied with this (and I hope you were too!)


End file.
